


Aliens Watch Alien

by Nightelfbane



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types
Genre: After the Collector Base but before The Arrival, F/M, Fluff, Movie Night, Scary Movies, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-06-29 17:31:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19835137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightelfbane/pseuds/Nightelfbane
Summary: After the destruction of the Collector Base, the crew watches an old Earth vid to relax.They do not relax. At all.





	Aliens Watch Alien

**Author's Note:**

> If you see any grammatical or spelling errors, point them out so I can correct them!
> 
> For clarity, they're watching the Director's Cut.
> 
> Alright, I actually had a bunch of trouble figuring out which game to set this in. At first I wanted to set it in Mass Effect 1, immediately after the team destroys the Cerberus rachni testing station. But then I thought, "But wait! I want Mordin and EDI and the others!"  
> So then I thought to put it during the Citadel Party. But then Mordin and Thane and Legion are still out!  
> So I decided to set it in Mass Effect 2. We miss out on Wrex and Javik and Liara and Traynor and others, but some sacrifices were necessary. Maybe I'll do a minichapter with their reactions. Who knows? I don't.

The crew was assembled in the cargo bay, lounging on an assortment of pillows, blankets, and chairs pilfered from the mess hall and crew quarters. After two weeks docked at the Citadel, the hull breaches caused by the Oculus had been repaired. A holoprojector sat before the crew, being fiddled with by Jane Shepard as she set up the vid.

Jack was perched on top of a crate on the fringes of the group. Samara sat cross legged on the floor, much as she was when meditating. Garrus and Tali were reclined on piles of pillows, Tali already drinking dextro booze through a straw. Legion and Mordin stood behind the group, the latter pacing with his restless energy. Zaeed and Grunt sat on blankets. Thane sat in the shadow of the crate Jack was on, using it as a backrest. Kasumi was...somewhere. Probably. And finally, Joker, Miranda, Kenneth, Gabriella, Chakwas, and Jacob sat in chairs like normal people. Everyone had their choice of popcorn, graxen, or drinks. 

"What are we watching again?" Garrus asked.

"'Alien'!" Shepard answered excitedly. "A classic Earth film about a human starship crew encountering a hostile lifeform."

Shepard finished with the holoprojector and a large screen appeared before them in midair. As the title screens began rolling, Shepard snuggled up to Garrus on the pillows, who put an arm over her shoulder.

The Nostromo slowly drifted into view and Tali scoffed. " _That's_ a starship?"

"Tali, the movie is 200 years old. Humans didn't even know about the mass effect yet, let alone have their own starships. We had to make things up," Shepard explained.

The view changed to inside the Nostromo and the camera panned around the interior before settling on a small screen, which then lit up with numbers and readouts.

"I'm bored!" Grunt complained. "When does the fighting start?" The others shushed him and he settled down.

They watched without further interruptions until the crew prepared to leave the Nostromo on the planetoid. 

"Keelah, are those envirosuits?" Tali exclaimed, horrified at the clumsy, bulky spacesuits Dallas, Kane, and Lambert were wearing.

"They look like stretched out volus" Garrus said disbelievingly. 

Shepard smacked his arm. "200 years, guys!" She said, exasperated.

The group, watched, interested but not yet frightened, as the characters entered the alien ship and the Nostromo lost contact with them.

_"Come on down here. Something different down here," said Kane. "I don't know what it is, but...see if we can get up that wall. If we can get up that wall we can find out."_

_Kane hauled himself up and over the edge, standing up in a massive chamber domimated by an enormous chair. The camera panned upwards, revealing the fossilized alien with a gaping hole in its chest._

"Ugly bastard," Zaeed remarked. 

_Captain Dallas climbed up the chair to get a closer look at the alien. He came face to face with the hole in its ribcage._

_"Bones are bent outward," he observed. "Like he exploded from inside."_

The tension in the Normandy's cargo bay was becoming palpable. Shepard could feel it in Garrus's body, in the way that an uneasy silence had replaced the friendly banter from before. 

_"Hey Ash. That transmission, Mother's deciphered part of it. It doesn't look like an S.O.S.." Ripley said._

_"What is it, then?"_

_"Well, I...It looks like a warning."_

"They're fucked," Jack said.

"We don't even know what they're facing," Miranda argued.

"Maybe it's an alien virus," Tali suggested. "The alien transmission was warning others away so the infection didn't spread."

"Virus unlikely to cause explosive fracture of chest cavity" Mordin pointed out.

"Let's just wait and - wait, are they seriously going into the mysterious dark hole?" Jacob said incredulously as Kane was clipped to a rope and lowered deeper into the alien ship.

"Not exactly a wise decision," Thane mused.

The crew of the Normandy fell silent as Kane began relaying what he was seeing back to his companions. Uneasy muttering whispered around the cargo bay as he discovered the eggs and began examining them.

Shepard felt Garrus stiffen, the arm around her shoulders pulling her closer to him. His mandibles twitched erratically. She grinned and stretched up to whisper in his ear.

"Don't worry, Garrus, I'll protect you."

He glared at her. "I'm not - "

He was interrupted by the voice of Kane.

_"Wait a minute. There's movement." Inside the egg, something pale twitched and shuddered._

_The egg blossomed open at the top like a grotesque, fleshy flower. Kane took a step back in shock._

Dr. Chakwas was clenching and unclenching her hands in her lap. In the back of the group, Mordin had actually stopped his pacing, watching the vid with unblinking eyes. Next to him, Legion was more interested in observing the crew around it, finding their reactions fascinating.

The quiet tension was shattered when the facehugger surged out of the egg, attacking Kane. 

" _Spider! Spider!_ " Tali shrieked, flinching and almost spilling her drink.

"Bah! That thing was too tiny to be a real threat," Grunt declared.

"It would be unwise to underestimate your foe," Samara said, serene as ever. 

"I'd just stomp on it and find a _worthy_ enemy," the krogan replied.

* * *

_Inside the airlock, Dallas spoke to Ripley._

_"We're clean. Let us in."_

_"What happened to Kane?"_

_"Something has attached itself to him, we have to get him to the infirmary right away."_

_"What kind of thing? I need a clear definition."_

_"An organism!" Dallas replied impatiently. "Open the hatch!"_

_"Wait a minute. If we let it in the ship could be infected. You know the quarantine procedure - 24 hours for decontamination."_

_"He could die in 24 hours. Open the hatch."_

_"Listen to me. If we break quarantine we could all die." Ripley said._

_Lambert cut in angrily. "Look, would you open the goddamn hatch? We have to get him inside!"_

_Ripley waited a moment before replying. "...No. I can't do that."_

"Open the fucking hatch, you bitch!" Jack yelled, with murmurs of agreement from Jacob, Kasumi, and Garrus.

"No! Follow the proper decontamination procedures or you could wipe out the entire ship!" Miranda countered, backed up by Tali, Chakwas, and Mordin. 

Shepard shushed them before the argument could continue further. On the screen, Ash opened the hatch, and the film cut to Kane's broken helmet being cut off of him. 

Various noises of disgust filled the cargo bay when the facehugger was fully revealed.

"Well, _that's_ not something you'd want to see on the dinner table," quipped Joker. 

"It kinda looks like a nutsack crossed with a spider," Zaeed observed. 

"Ew," Tali said.

_"Where do you wanna do this?" Dallas asked as he and Ash prepared to cut the alien organism off of Kane._

_"We'll make an incision just below the knuckle there."_

_Ash lowered the laser scalpel to one of t_ _he facehugger's legs and made the cut. Bright green blood spurted out onto the floor. As they watched in disbelief, the blood began melting its way through the floor._

_"That crap's gonna eat through the hull!" Dallas cried. He and the rest of the crew raced away to stop it._

_In the end, the acid blood ate through two decks of the Nostromo, sizzling out on the ceiling of the maintenance deck._

"So, Grunt...still wanna stomp on that thing?" Kasumi said as she materialized behind him.

Grunt, to his credit, only jumped a little bit. He turned to swat at her, but she was already stepping away, mid-cloak.

* * *

_Kane woke up and was released from the infirmary. He and the rest of the crew were in the mess hall, eating and chatting happily._

"Are human vids normally this short?" Thane asked.

"Yeah, was that it? I thought this was supposed to be a human classic," said Garrus.

Shepard didn't need to answer, as at that moment, Kane started coughing.

Everyone's attention returned to the vid.

_Kane coughed and wheezed, and the crew of the Nostromo got to their feet to help him. He collapsed suddenly, his back on the table. He thrashed and screamed as his crewmates tried desperately to help him. There was a spray of blood from his chest and everyone fell still._

_A moment passed, and Kane started thrashing more violently than before. His screams devolved into short gasps before cutting off entirely. With a great crack, the front of his chest lifted upwards, spraying more blood over the Nostromo crew._

_A pale, bloody worm rose from the gaping hole in Kane's chest, turning its eyeless face around the room. It let out two high-pitched, grating cries before racing off the table and disappearing, leaving the blood-splattered crew shocked and silent._

"...Well," Chakwas said after a moment. "That's what happens when you don't follow proper quarantine procedures."

* * *

_"You're sure it took him into the airshaft?" Dallas asked, after the alien had ambushed Brett._

_"Disappeared into one of the cooling ducts," Ripley confirmed._

_"No question, it's using the air ducts to move around," Parker said._

_"Well, this air shaft may work to our advantage. Here it leads up to and comes out in the main airlock," Dallas said, looking at the Nostromo's blueprints. "All right, there's only one big opening along the way. We can cover that up, and then we drive it into the airlock and zap it into outer space."_

"Bad plan," Jacob remarked. 

"How would _you_ deal with it, then?" Joker challenged. "If that thing got onto the Normandy, how would you deal with it?"

"Well, the Normandy can seal off each deck and depressurize each one separately, right, EDI?"

"That is correct, Operative Taylor," EDI's disembodied voice rang clearly through the cargo bay. 

"And you would be able to use your internal sensors to detect an intruder, right?"

"Correct."

"Well, okay then. Evacuate everyone from whichever deck its on, seal it off, then depressurize that deck. Kill it with vacuum," Jacob said proudly. 

"Unless it moves decks while you're evacuating," Miranda countered.

"It would also take too much time. The alien could strike during the confusion of an evacuation," added Samara.

"Just shoot it!" Grunt said impatiently, causing most everyone to look at him in disbelief.

"It has acid for blood!" Kasumi said.

"Wait a minute, the kid might be on to something," Zaeed said. "What's the Normandy made out of? It wouldn't be able to melt through the entire hull, would it?"

"The hull is pretty strong," Engineer Daniels supplied. "It probably wouldn't cause a hull breach but it would cause a hell of a lot of damage when it melted though the floor."

"Aye, cleaning that up would be a nightmare," Donnelly agreed. "Best not to do that."

Thane spoke up. "You would also be in danger of getting hit by blood splatter in the close quarters of the Normandy."

"C'mon guys, you're missing the obvious solution," a grinning Jack said from atop her perch.

Everyone looked at her.

Jack threw her hands in the air, her body glowing with a biotic corona. "Biotics, dumbasses! Lift it with biotics then just carry it to the airlock. Toss it in and then blow that fucker into space. Problem solved."

"Suggest moving it into a containment field instead. Would like to run tests on the creature," Mordin said.

"That's a horrible idea, Mordin. It would just escape," said Joker.

"You'd have to draw it into the open to catch it," said Garrus. "Or to shoot it."

"I'd just lure it into Engineering through one door, then escape through the other doors," said Tali. "Lock all the doors and air ducts behind me, then remotely cause a core overload. Plasma is vented into the engineering compartment and the alien is completely vaporized."

"How would you even lure it?" Shepard asked.

Tali hesitated, and Mordin came to her rescue. "Predators that stalk their prey often wait for one member of the group to become separated from the others before attacking. Alien here follows that pattern. Assemble entire crew in cargo bay, send Tali alone to lure alien into engineering."

"A core overload and plasma vent would still cause a lot of damage," Donnelly protested. 

"I would prefer that the Normandy remain unmelted, either by acid or by plasma," EDI remarked mildly. 

"Ha! Biotics win, bitches!" Jack said smugly.

"Let's just watch the movie," Shepard suggested, unpausing the vid.

* * *

 _"It's a robot. Ash is a goddamn robot!" Parker stared at the twitching body in front of him. Ash's head was split from his torso, connected by tubes and wires rising from the meat of his "human" parts. His arms twitched mechanically while his severed neck spurted a thick, white fluid._ _  
_

"Fascinating," Legion said. "Ash is both organic and synthetic. A unique perspective."

"I have often wondered about the varied sensory input that organics seem to enjoy," EDI replied.

Legion's face plates fluttered up and down slowly. "Organic-synthetic fusion, similar to the Ash android, might bring us greater understanding of organic behavior."

Joker chuckled nervously. "You two aren't, uhh, going to start chopping us up and grafting our bits onto you, right?"

"Do not worry, Jeff," EDI said. "Your Vrolik's Syndrome means that you will be spared the coming harvest."

Uncomfortable silence stretched on for a long, tense moment.

"That is a joke."

* * *

"Ugh. Is this really necessary?" Miranda sighed as Ripley began removing her clothes in preparation for hypersleep on the Nostromo's shuttle.

"Yes," Joker and Kenneth replied simultaneously without looking away from the screen, where Ripley was bent over working.

"Aye, she really has a mighty fine - "

"Kenneth, that actor has been dead for a hundred years!" Gabriella said, expasperated.

"That doesn't make her any less - _gah!_ " Kenneth's startled, high-pitched cry blended in with Ripley's when the xenomorph's arm swung out from the wall of the shuttle.

The crew's laughter echoed around the cargo bay. and Gabriella punched his shoulder. "Saw that coming from a mile away."

* * *

 _"Final report of the commercial starship Nostromo. Third officer reporting. The other members of the crew...Kane, Lambert, Parker, Brett, Ash, and Captain Dallas are dead. Cargo and ship destroyed._ _I should reach the frontier in about six weeks. With a little luck the network will pick me up. This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off."  
_

"Well," Kasumi said, decloaking behind the rest of the group as the credits rolled. "That was thoroughly disturbing."

"But it was a good vid," Zaeed said.

"A fascinating exanple of speculative xenobiology," Mordin agreed. "Would still like to study the creature."

"Again, Mordin, please no," Joker said.

"So?" Shepard asked as the crew stood, stretched, and began cleaning up after themselves. "What did the rest of you guys think?"

"I think I'm never going to sleep again," Gabriella said matter-of-factly.

"Oh come on, Daniels. It wasn't that scary," Jack said.

"You only say that because you have biotic powers that could destroy a cruiser." Gabby replied.

" _I_ didn't think it was scary at all," Tali proclaimed, to the disbelieving scoffs of the entire crew.

"Tali, you were the only one who screamed at the movie," Thane said.

"I did not!"

"I have a perfect recollection of you screaming during the egg scene," he said with a small smile.

"T-that's just because I was startled! Anyway, the facehugger isn't even a threat to me." Tali gestured to her faceplate. "I have protection."

"Yeah, okay, but so did Kane," Jacob pointed out. "That facehugger melted its way right through it."

"Oh," Tali said quietly. "Right."

It was late, and one by one the crew filtered back to their respective living spaces. However, very few managed to get any meaningful amount of sleep.

* * *

Shepard walked leisurely into the science lab, an extra large mug of coffee in hand. Garrus had tossed and turned late into the night before falling into a fitful sleep, disrupting her own rest. She grinned at the memory of his adamant denial that his restlessnes had nothing to do with the vid.

She exchanged greetings with Mordin before accessing the research terminal. She raised her coffee to her lips as she scrolled through the research projects.

She paused with the mug halfway to her mouth.

"Mordin?"

"Yes, Shepard?" The professor replied, not looking up from where he was tapping away at his terminal.

"Did you create a research project for acid resistant armor?"

"Yes, based on thresher maw acid." He inhaled deeply. "Just in case."

Shepard thought for a moment, shrugged, and then authorized the project.

**Author's Note:**

> OOC on Jack's part because she's the type of woman to blast the fuck out of annoying movie talkers
> 
> Anyway leave a comment so i dont hate myself


End file.
